Aspects of archaeological palynology: Methodology and applications, Owen K. Davis (Editor), American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists, Contributions Series Number 29 Available from the Palynology Laboratory, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4352 221 pp., $15.00 (paperbound)
✍ Scribed by Vaughn M. Bryant Jr.
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1995
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 221 KB
- Volume
- 10
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0883-6353
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Except for a few available textbooks containing chapters on archaeological palynology, one book devoted only to this subject (Dimbleby, 1985), and a scattering of journal articles and book chapters, there is no other major work or edited volume devoted to archaeological palynology. Thus, Owen Davis' edited collection of articles represents the first attempt to gather and publish a group of articles on this topic of growing importance.
Prior to the 1980s published reports of archaeological pollen studies were sporadic at best. However, a recently growing interest in searching for an ever-expanding way to interpret past cultures has placed more emphasis on examining the pollen records of sites. As Dr. Davis states in the Introduction, "In the last decade, the analysis of pollen from archaeological sites has become one of the most active fields of palynology (p. 1).
This book should command an important place on the bookshelf of any serious archaeologist or palynologist interested in how pollen and spores can be used to answer archaeological questions, and to recover data about past cultural events. The idea for this book was an outgrowth of presentations a t the 8th International Palynological Congress, held in Aixen-Provence, France, in 1992. Most of the articles represent papers from that conference, but a few additional contributions were added.
The book contains 17 original articles that cover a wide range of studies of archaeological sediments; as a group, they also cover a wide range of geographical regions and periods of the Quaternary. When categorized, the 17 articles focus on one or more individual topics. For example, there are six articles that discuss problems related to pollen dispersal and how that aspect affects the interpretation of archaeological pollen data. Six articles cover pollen preservation, and why the sediments of some sites contain abundant fossil pollen while other sites are barren. This last topic should be of special interest to archaeologists and others who "want to know" which types of environmental conditions and which types of soils might prove the most useful for fossil pollen sampling. Two of the articles discuss problems related to the extraction of fossil pollen from soils, and one article deals specifically with the topic of pollen sourcing (using pollen to determine the source area, or use of an artifact). Eight articles examine how archaeological pollen data can be used to reconstruct ancient vegetational patterns, and three additional articles explain how pollen data can be used to determine whether or not sediments have been disturbed. Finally, two of the articles reveal how archaeological pollen data can be used to identify or infer ancient dietary practices.
The quality of the articles are good, yet a few stand out as exceptional because they report new or innovative techniques, or represent superior examples of how pollen data should be collected and interpreted. The article by Dr. Marie-Francoise